I dunno. Maybe it's just a guru thing, but 'cause I use Wikidot all the time, I tend to say type the syntax in automatically.

However, when it comes to personal sites like blogs, anonymous users don't want to be bamboozled by all of those scary looking buttons. I think the first row of buttons is more than adequate for them to use.

This code displays the first row of buttons when commenting in forums. The rest of the site (page creation, for instance) is unaffected: